


Mother

by WhovianThunder



Category: Split (2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-10-18 16:52:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10621104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhovianThunder/pseuds/WhovianThunder
Summary: It was almost upon them: the highest form of human evolution. There was just one problem. That problem had a name, one that would serve as the broken mother of a superior species. Convincing her to accept her fate wouldn't be easy, but she WOULD accept it . . . whether she wanted to or not.





	1. Abduction

** Dennis **

This wasn't like your average abduction movie sequence. The perpetrator didn't hide behind a thick veil of darkness as he waited patiently for his prey. Instead, he stood out in broad daylight, steely blue eyes sitting completely focused behind black-rimmed glasses. He knew he was different, that he didn't really need to remain hidden. These people were asleep, after all. They were no more capable of detecting an oddity enveloping their surroundings than they were able to imagine the sheer level of clarity that encompasses the observations of the broken, yet he did his best to stay out of their peripheral vision. But why? 

_Casey._

Among the flock of sheep, there existed one that the universe saw fit to gift the Horde with. She alone was awake. Her breathtaking beauty lied in her scars, jagged little interloping lines that served as badges of both her strength and her suffering. He saw it all as he watched her from her bedroom window that first night, and all three nights after that. Patricia knew she was the one, but it was Dennis that found her. This knowledge left him with a strange feeling of possession he couldn't shake. 

He wanted her.

He wanted to take her, strip her, tame her.

He wanted to _own_ her. 

A soft growl rumbled from his throat, snapping him out of his dark and twisted fantasies. With the voice of reason firmly lodged inside his head, his focus came back into play and all that he desired faded beneath the weight of a far greater purpose. As the chosen ones stepped into the automobile, Dennis began to approach the father of one of the girls. His brows furrowed in concentration, his mind as clear as a cloudless sky. His hand clutched the bottle of chloroform spray, footsteps steady and unrushed. Ignoring the man's questions, he struggled for one brief moment before successfully subduing his opponent, dropping him to the floor and slamming the opened trunk as he made his way into the driver seat of the car. The cackling girls behind him provided as little comfort as the horrible conditions he noticed upon his entrance. 

 _Trash._  

The dashboard was littered with crumpled bits of paper that mocked him with its despicable presence. He shook his head and clutched the wheel, a subdued mixture of exhaustion and disgust coloring his expression. Wrapping his fingers in a yellow cloth kept inside his pants pocket at all times, he removed the offending objects from their resting place, cursing human beings for their slovenly ways. Disgusting, dirty, offensive . . .  

"Excuse me, sir. I believe you have the wrong car."  

Interrupted, Dennis knew it was time. Slipping on his mask, he sprayed both girls in the backseat, glad to be rid of their insufferable laughter. It was tiring, to say the least, but he got the job done. Sighing, he wiped down the front of the car, hoping there were people out there that kept their possessions in much better condition than this vehicle's owner. He was so absorbed in his task that he didn't even take notice of the girl sitting beside him. It wasn't until she pressed the lever of her door that the sound snapped him back to reality. 

 _Her_. He'd tried so hard to suppress his growing urges for her that he'd completely forgotten about the most important part of the Horde's legacy. 

She was the mother of their children; their broken bride. The eradication of her existence from his memory was a huge disservice to such a beautiful creature of human supremacy. But his attention was back with a brutal vengeance, and this time, her presence would linger in his mind's eye. She wouldn't escape him again.               

Determination washed over him in prolific waves of pure, unbridled ecstasy. His consuming need to have her gave him all the ammunition he needed, and as her teary eyes gazed upon him in fear, he grabbed a fistful of her hair and put her in a deep, deep sleep, exhaling in restraint at the now unconscious girl splayed before him like an offering. 

 

 _Be good, Dennis._  

Those words, spoken like a mantra in his head for as long as he could remember, calmed his body and soothed his nerves. He could be good. Would be good. _Had_ to be good. 

The future of their species depended on it.  

 

 


	2. Casey

**Casey**

Breathing.

It was the first thing Casey heard as consciousness descended over her like an ugly rain cloud. Shallow and scattered, the sounds intermingled and skipped. Broken, soft, sharp. The variations marched to the rhythm of her rapid heartbeats and kept the pace even as her eyes opened to the sight of Marcia and Claire in a strange bedroom devoid of windows and furniture beyond two single cots. The one she was lying on was both hard and soft at the same time, but it at least spared her the creepy creak when she lifted herself from the mattress and took note of her surroundings.

Upon inspection, Casey noticed a bathroom adjacent to their room, with a flower sitting atop the sink and one on each pillow. It sent up red flags of an unforeseeable future like they were destined to be used for something they had no knowledge of. It almost seemed . . . sacrificial.

"We woke up in here," Claire said softly.

Casey stared at her in a lackadaisical daze, wishing she'd never gone to that stupid party. The awkwardness that comes with being a distinct entity separate from the rest of your peer group doesn't put any pressure on a person to fit in. All it does is further establish the question mark of your existence, confirming your belief that you were never meant to fit in a world where average beings set the rules in opposition to your character. But when you're constantly bombarded with a molesting uncle that thrives on your sexual submission, what else is there to do but escape to a place where you can rot in your own imperfection? She was beginning to realize that her life was always destined to spiral out of control. Each choice she makes, no matter how purposeful, does nothing to slow the onslaught of life's great injustices. Her tragedy lied in the very fabric of the space she took up and the air she breathed, where reality sneered at the very nerve of her will to prevail. This universe was against her. Every single shred of evidentiary support reaffirmed her worst fears and did nothing to soothe them. It was for precisely this reason that she remained so calm. Having personally dealt with her own predator, she understood that in the end, cooler heads would prevail. It wasn't impulse and emotionality that saved you from a sticky situation. It was observation and logic. It was the ability to assess your surroundings and determine the best course of action based on your findings. You needed a scientific thought process, not a bleeding heart and a fragile ego. With this in mind, Casey sat silently; looking, waiting, watching. Whatever was happening, she would get to the bottom of it. She just had to.

Unfortunately, the "had" in her reverie would have to wait, as her musings of reflection dissipated the moment the wooden door opened to reveal the face of their kidnapper. Armed with a chair and the same yellow cloth Casey saw him picking up trash with earlier in the car, he slowly made his way inside, assembling the chair and wiping the seat of it with careful precision. He bent over to sit but stopped short when he caught her impenetrable gaze. His face, once a blank slate, shifted into a horrifying emotion Casey knew like the back of her hand: desire.

As quickly as it came, it was gone. She didn't want to process the facts. She wanted to pretend he didn't just look at her as if she were a meal he'd been denied for a Lent long gone, but she knew that would have been a lie. It wasn't a figment of her imagination, nor was it a moment of mistaken perception. It was actual desire, the kind she'd seen in her uncle far too many times to count. The idea of it disgusted her in a way she couldn't quite explain. It wasn't like all the other times. This was different and she couldn't figure out why. She hated his lust more than the kind displayed in the pale eyes of her own flesh and blood. While both were primal, this man's elicited a reaction out of her that was both foreign and entirely unwelcome. She just wished she could identify it.

When the stranger took his eyes off Casey and folded his arms in a defensive gesture, his face lost the almost soft quality it possessed in the midst of their nonverbal exchange. He was now cold, a man on a mission. His eyes landed on Marsha and Casey saw something so familiar, it made her cringe. Marsha tried to make her short skirt cover more of her thighs, but by then it was pointless. He knew what he wanted and so did everyone else in the room.

"I choose you first," he said.

Casey didn't move when he overtook Marsha in spite of her screams, but when the girl stumbled toward her in an effort to get away from her attacker, Casey took advantage of the disarray by placing her head against the one she was trying to protect. "Pee on yourself! Pee on yourself!" she said urgently, knowing it was the only way the frazzled teen would make it out of there without being sexually assaulted. The man then grabbed Marsha and dragged her out of the room, slapping her face and shutting the door before anyone could try to escape. From within the other room, both Casey and Claire could hear the frenzied protests, and it didn't take long for Claire to rush to the door and pound on the wood, screaming desperately for her best friend. Thankfully, her begging and pleading were rewarded with Marsha's reemergence as she was half carried over the threshold by her assailant, his anger at being urinated on evident in the way he growled like a wild animal.

Tears ran down Casey's cheeks when he finally disappeared. Visions of her childhood flashed before her eyes, blurring the lines between the past and present. Pain, shame, and abuse twisted simultaneously down a distorted path existing somewhere inside her fractured mind and this bastard was making her bleed all that she tried so vehemently to forget. She realized then that she never would escape this place unless she could set aside the echoes of the past long enough to figure out what in the hell was going on and what they were all there for. Regardless of the consequences, her inner demons would have to be put on hold. As of this moment, the only thing that mattered was that man.

She just hoped she could decipher his secret before one of them died.


	3. Barry Who?

**Dr. Fletcher**

The brain, an area from which all aspects of the human condition derive, consists of neural pathways that interconnect to form the basis of everything that we are or ever will be. Despite desperate preachings of clergymen and the indoctrinated faithful, materialists know that our consciousness is dependent on this thing that serves as the pinnacle of our existence. Without it, we cease to function. Science has disproven so much of the holy books by now that rationalists have come to accept that our lives will never persist beyond the boundaries of our brains. When those sparks stop, so do we. 

Dr. Fletcher was one of these rationalists. She'd spoken with people whose brain functions perished at the moment of their deaths, only for it to revive when doctors managed to successfully pull them back from the abyss. She knew before they even said anything that there was no afterlife. At first, it was more than a little disappointing. After all, you get so used to being alive that hearing a person tell you they remember nothing of the other side gives you a sense of existential dread that could never be soothed by the knowledge of our impending doom. But then the reality sinks in and the beauty that is the brain adapts to the change, leading one to an acceptance of a course which cannot be altered. Despite the understanding that life holds no meaning, we nevertheless continue to search for it, forever driven by our evolutionary imperative to both propagate our species and indulge in thinking that will motivate us to propel our lives forward. Part of this need is met when we acknowledge the importance of others in our progress. Everyone serves a purpose. If they didn't, nature would erase them. Our strength is determined by how well we adapt to our environment and just how far we'll go to survive. 

It was the audacity of a person's iron will in the face of adversity that caused Dr. Fletcher to flirt with the idea of psychiatry. But it wasn't just any run-of-the-mill disorder that fascinated her. Rather, it was the minds of DID patients. Why? Because these weren't ordinary human beings. These were people with the ability to create a defense mechanism that enabled them to adapt and survive in a world that showed them nothing but unprecedented malice. Unlike the rest of humankind, these special few showcased a way of coping that no other could ever hope to imitate. Instead of enduring the pain, their minds split into fragments that held a key part of their personalities under the guise of separate entities. These identities take on the burden of trauma and exhibit characteristics that better suit their current situation. If the person in question finds themselves in a place that isn't emotionally secure, the strength of certain personalities will take over and contain the agony in an effort to protect the original. This incredible transition is in complete harmony with unique copies of an original design; each one may be different, yet they all equate to parts of the same whole.   

In short, they were extraordinary.   

As she watched Kevin Wendell Crumb's alter Barry prattle on about the drawings resting in her lap, she couldn't help but smile at his enthusiasm. Her realization that she needed these individuals just as much as they needed her only reinforced the idea that humans relied on each other. So much so, that nature even finds a way for lone wolves to create alters to help them adapt. What happens when a person doesn't possess this capability? Well . . . they find others to fill the void. 

Hence, the patients becoming family cliche. 

"These are very artistic, Barry," she said, analyzing the drawings. "Just the kind of thing Hampton's ladies would spend $15,000 on to wear once at a charity ball."

Barry blushed at her sudden praise. "Shut up. You know, I-I can't stay too long. This is just a-just a visit."

Her face betrayed her curiosity at this admission, and the expression only deepened the longer their conversation went on. Suddenly, as if by magic, she began to notice things about Barry that gave her pause. His insistence that his numerous e-mails were nothing more than feelings of being overwhelmed weren't adding up. He may have tried to downplay whatever was bothering him, but he should have known better than to feign ignorance with Karen Fletcher. She was far too observant of him and his need to "tidy up" her office, combined with his forgetfulness regarding her solitary living situation, worried her to no end. What was up with him? And why did he seem so hesitant about opening up to her? 

Her suspicions became more pronounced when he almost left without his drawings. Upon retrieving them with a slightly embarrassed smile, he started at the sound of her friend as she came barreling through the door without any regard for Karen's clients. "Oh, Karen! I am so sorry to bother you but I needed some flour for my chocolate chip cookies. Oh . . . I see you have a guest."

"Yes," Karen replied, momentarily stunned by Myrtle's gall. "Barry, this is my friend, a friend who knows I usually have company this time of day." 

Myrtle ignored the reproach in her voice. "Hello there, young man. Don't mind me. I'm apparently nothing more than a rude, unseemly old woman with a sadistic streak." Myrtle's face suddenly dawned with a realization both Karen and Barry frowned at. "Say, speaking of sadistic streaks, did you hear about the disappearances of those teenage girls? You might want to be careful, Barry. It seems people are disappearing all over the place lately. First some octogenarian south of here, then that child stupid enough to take candy from a stranger and now . . . gee, I forgot those girls names. No, that's not true. I remember one. Oh, what was it?"

As Myrtle sifted through her memories to retrieve a forgotten tidbit of information, Barry's expression suddenly changed. His visibly stiffened body melted with what could only be described as a soft, sensuous electric current that spread rapidly through his now jelly-like limbs, eventually taking the form of an unbridled desire on his handsome face that shocked his psychiatrist to her very core. 

When he spoke, his voice oozed with an inappropriate expression of eroticism that registered from deep within his vocal chords, penetrating the atmosphere with a soft, yet . . . primitive growl. "Casey." 

Dr. Fletcher blinked. Myrtle's brows furrowed with suspicion and Barry ignored it all, lost as he was in his own reverie. 

"Well, I uh . . . I better get going," Myrtle said, eyeing Barry as if he were the prime suspect in a murder investigation. "Karen, I'll get the flour from you another time." 

Karen kept her eye on Barry as Myrtle disappeared from view, every racing thought in her brain fighting for dominance amidst a sea of despair. Somewhere between the endless supply of patients and the mind-numbing emptiness she felt being on her own, she seemed to have ignored what appeared to be taking place right under her very nose. Kevin Crumb may have been a fractured boy but his alters were proving to be a greater challenge than she ever thought possible. Could it be that she had lost focus on what really mattered? The signs she was supposed to be looking for? The rules of the game she now believed were changing? 

She couldn't put her finger on it yet. She didn't know how. She didn't know why. She didn't know when. But she knew this was not Barry. This was not anyone she'd ever encountered before in all the time she'd known Kevin. This alter was methodical. This alter was perverse. This alter was . . . _dominant._

But if he was not Barry, then who was he?

She had a sinking suspicion she was about to find out.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SOOOO sorry it has taken me so long to update. Truth be told, I hate this chapter. It was supposed to be much longer but I made a promise to certain readers that I would have it up by the end of the week and I'd forgotten about both the promise and my story in the midst of all the work I've been doing and I apologize for that. As a result, I had to rush the ending and it's not at all what I'd planned on. However, I am glad I can give you all something to whet your appetites until the next installment, despite its many imperfections. Hope you all enjoy it and I promise the next chapter will be longer, more in-depth, and less rushed. Hope you had a good weekend and I'll see you with the next chapter hopefully by the end of this coming week. Toodles! :)


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